Escape at Dannemora

It is always an arduous challenge to tell a true story, especially when few people know about that true story and when there are too few details about that story other than a story about something unlikely but that really happened.
It's even more difficult when both director and director have never told this event and we've all known it for comic and iconic roles over the last 20 years.

Showtime, however, is a network that loves risk and proved it this year with that absolute pearl of "Who is America" entrusted to the histrionics of Sacha Baron Cohen and in recent years with titles like Dexter and Homeland that were anything but canonical and for everyone, without forgetting Masters of Sex. A brave network that often started real waves on this or that theme.

Last winter Showtime tried again and did it with a bang, giving us a miniseries in 7 episodes stellar as stellar was the cast that composed it.

We witnessed the serial debut of a giant like Benicio del Toro (yes, Del Toro is a phenomenon) next to which the always excellent Paul Dano and the monumental Patricia Arquette, fresh winner of Golden Globe for her performance in the role of Tilly.

To direct "Escape at Dannemora", this is the title of the series, the unsuspected Ben Stiller who plays the role of comic actor to dress those of the director and the results are excellent, beyond any reasonable doubt and beyond all suspicion.

The series is a "prison movie" that in the beginning was Oz and then it was Prison Break to be clear, but here we start from a true story, the story happened only a few years ago in Dannemora prison where 2 prisoners impersonated by Del Toro and Dano managed to escape from prison thanks to the help of one of their "teachers" in charge of the sewing department in which they participated.

We know that the 2 will escape but we don't know how, how long they will take to get out, which vulnus will be able to exploit and how and how their escape will evolve.

And it's here that the series manages to create mystery and that healthy anxiety in the viewer that from episode to episode tries to cling to this or that detail to understand how and when the story will proceed to the final point known to all.

The interpretations and direction are at the highest level. Del Toro teaches acting by working on small facial expressions and succeeding in creating an intense and perverse character who for almost the entire series seems to be in total control of himself and the events surrounding him. He contrasts with the character played by Paul Dano, who is much more restless and tormented. However, it is the Arquette who is the master, who deforms face and body to play a woman who dreams of another life and who, in order to do so, is willing to betray, let herself go and be transported into a dream of escape that sooner or later will become reality thanks to her.

Ben Stiller will show his talent with a clean and never baroque direction that alternates long and panoramic planes with fantastic close-ups, creating tension even and especially when not a single word flies on the screen.

Escape at Dannemora is among the best series of the year. Few people will have noticed it, little publicized as it was, but many will think again when they spend the 7 hours in the company of unreal characters but really existed.